Ravens Cheerleader Ousted for Weight? Probably.

The Super Bowl is on Sunday! As the Ravens and 49ers got ready to go down to the Big Easy, they had to make decisions about who would go with the teams. There is only a certain amount of seats on a plane, rooms in a hotel, and money in the bank. The NFL has a rule that teams are allowed to bring only 32 cheerleaders per team to the Super Bowl.

The Ravens published their list of Super Bowl cheerleaders last week. But there was a problem, according to Courtney Lenz, a 5-year Ravens cheerleader veteran: she wasn't on the list. Lenz had announced in December that she would retire at the end of the season, assuming that she would be at every game until the Ravens lost in the postseason. She also weighed in two pounds over the "weight limit" and is now wondering if her weight is the reason she was asked to hand in her uniform before the Super Bowl.

The Retirement
If this was really about Lenz retiring and the Ravens organization treated everyone equally, then why wasn't Ray Lewis cut from the Super Bowl squad? I'm pretty sure people are more upset about Lewis's retirement than hers. If the team was "upset" with people who said they weren't coming back next season, then Lewis should have been cut before Lenz. I think I can say pretty safely that this isn't about her retirement announcement.

The Weight
This is interesting. Here is the link to Lenz's "cheerleader bio" on the Ravens' site. I have no idea when the photos of her in her uniform were taken (or if they've been edited to take some pounds off the sides or not), but she does not look like that anymore. She might have only gained two pounds, but her body composition has completely changed.

I've never cheered before, but I went to the University of Louisville, where our cheerleaders won 15 National Championships. I roomed with a UofL cheerleader hopeful my freshman year. They do not have a weight requirement; they have a BMI requirement. They also have a "you-need-to-look-good-in-your-uniform" requirement. Muffin tops do not a good look make.

Lenz cheering in too-tight pants.
(Photo from Facebook)

Official Ravens Photo of Lenz
(Photo from BaltimoreRavens.com)

My Verdict
I'm not saying that she should be nixed because of what she looks like (she is gorgeous, just a little plump), but it would definitely not surprise me if she was. I mean she's really pretty, but she's pudgy. Cheerleaders aren't pudgy. They're just not. This is not me having an opinion about whether pudgy girls should or should not be allowed to cheer, but I witnessed a large cheerleader at my high school being booed off the floor during a pep rally. Even high schoolers have no tolerance for big cheerleaders. Every job has requirements and if you can't maintain those requirements, you get fired. Being small is part of the requirements for the gig that she chose. If she can't look the part, she can't be a member of the squad.

I would like to take a second and just say that this is absolutely not meant to be an attack on larger women. This is simply me pointing out the facts. In all honesty, if I had my way we would completely axe professional cheerleading altogether. It's silly and a waste of money. At least in college cheering there's some measure of gymnastic ability required. Somehow in the cross from college to pro, cheerleading becomes what a college dance team does (shaking pompoms and wearing small, tight clothes while shaking your hair and ass), not what a college cheer squad does (gymnastics). *Note: The University of Louisville also has a championship dance team (The Ladybirds) that is great at what it does. I just think that it belongs in college and needs to stay there.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Teachers: Is Your Personal Life Really Yours?

Sarah Jones, teacher and cheerleader.

Yesterday's abysmal court ruling that gave the BenGal dancer/teacher Sarah Jones only 5 years probation after she had sex with a student made me think about what teachers are allowed to do outside of school. I thought about it and came to a couple conclusions:
1. I would have felt incredibly uncomfortable if I had a teacher in high school who was a cheerleader/dancer on the nights and weekends. I would have felt like she was a role model for me; someone put there by the school board to show me a good example of an adult. There definitely would have been a huge influence on my dressing and actions if I had known she was a dancer, because I would see showing 90% of my body and shaking my boobs and butt to thousands of people both at home and on national television as an acceptable thing to do. "If my teacher can do it, why can't I?" would have been a pretty logical leap for a teenage mind.
2. If I had a child who had a cheerleader/dancer as a teacher, I would be very upset. If I ever have a child, male or female, who has a teacher who moonlights as a slutty dancer in clothing the size of a postage stamp, I would question the school board's decision of hiring her.

In Kentucky, according to KRS 161.164, teachers are not allowed to be part of political campaigns because they don't want the teachers using their authoritative positions to influence students. I spent two hours this morning looking for where the KRS laws mention stripping or dancing while being a teacher and they don't exist, as far as I've found. So, the state doesn't want teachers influencing their students (most of whom cannot vote) politically, but it's fine to influence the students' (most of whom in middle and high school are starting to experiment with sex) sexual behavior . I really disagree with this.

I looked at three Kentucky county teacher contracts this morning: Jefferson, Boone, and Kenton. In all of them, there was some version of this sentence: "The private life of a teacher is not the concern of the School Board unless it affect's the teachers responsibility as set forth in KRS 161.120." In Section 1, Part c of this statute, it says, "Committing any act that constitutes...immoral conduct." Who decides "immoral"? I think dancing/cheering in extraordinarily revealing clothing on weekends is immoral. But obviously, the Board doesn't agree with that, because Sarah Jones was a teacher while she was a cheerleader.

Teachers have long been regarded as pillars of the community. I am a third generation teacher in my family and in my immediate family alone, there are 5 teachers. I see education and teaching as the noblest of professions because there would be no leaders, no engineers, no doctors, no lawyers, nothing, without teachers. It is my opinion that we need to restore the integrity to the teaching profession. Just like a politician's life is not their own (see Bill Clinton or anyone else who has done something in their personal life and gotten destroyed for it), neither is a teacher's life. When you enter the teaching profession, you become a role model for thousands of students. You are teaching the next generation about values, about academia, about social relations, and everything else. Overall, teachers see students more than parents do during the school year. I absolutely do not feel comfortable entrusting my children to people who sell their bodies on weekends (yes, nothing physical is happening, but you're baring your body to the world for entertainment). I don't care if it's "dancing" and some people consider it "athletic" and "not sexual" as I know some of you will respond. It is highly inappropriate for our students to be exposed to that mentality in a public school.

For the record, for those of you who know me and remember that I was a ballroom dancer for a few years and wore incredibly revealing costumes, I would not continue that sport as a teacher. I think that, too, is excessively revealing and too sexual to participate in publicly in competitions on my weekends as a teacher. I know that this is an amazingly conservative view, but the reason I have this opinion is that our children are exposed to so much sexual media all the time outside of school that I feel like school should be one place that is safe from that. Girls especially are so influenced by sex, "being sexy," and working to "look good." School should be a place for academia and not sex or having sex-related distractions, such as an entire class knowing their teacher bares (almost) all every weekend in front of a 50,000 person stadium.

Kids are impressionable. Let's work on giving them good impressions.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi